The past few days I’ve given you the most obvious, yet most practical, lifestyle changes that create possibilities for joy and flourishing in our lives. Does this mean I’ve earned a few days where I can talk about impractical matters? I hope so!

In addition to caring for ourselves physically, we need some kind of spiritual exercise in our lives to ground us in our way of seeing and we need concrete ways to display our spirituality in the real world. These, too, open the door for joy.

Now, perhaps the terms “spiritual exercise” or “spiritual discipline” seem a bit too formal, maybe even unhelpful. Here’s what I mean by that: We need to find practices that excite us about the possibility of maintaining conscious contact with God and encourage us to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Find something you actually want to do! Of course, all practices turn into disciplines and they will not always excite us, or enliven us, or awaken us. There will be days where it will feel like work. The point is, you don’t have to start off with an exercise you dislike.

Some of the things I like that fill this hole in my life are: silence, playing music, spiritual reading (something that stimulates my mind a bit), and time in nature.